AEROGRAMME HOME  > AEROGRAMME #5 [Sent 12 October 2024]

Balsa Basics Spitfire News

Hello Friends

Before we get started, a couple of quick Public Service Announcements:

Westland Lysander kit amendment

As so many of you bought the new Lysander kit, I thought this might be a quick and easy place to point out a small error on the parts layout diagram/key for the kit.

On Balsa Sheet 2, the part labelled NB1 should actually be NB3 and vice versa.

Just a small thing but best you should know.

Burghley House Christmas Market Stallholder Needed

Sometimes, just as you’re resting on your laurels and thinking you have everything sorted, the proverbial spanner thrusts its way into the works and creates an almighty PITA (pain in the aeromodeller).

Having thought we could cover the Christmas market at Burghley House, un-forseen circumstances mean that we are now struggling that weekend with four concurrent events.

If you live in or near Stamford and fancy earning some extra funds for Christmas by manning our stall for 4 days, please let us know asap at sales@vintagemodelcompany.com. The dates for the market are Thursday 28th November to Sunday 1st December. The setup is on Wednesday 27th, so you would need to attend for an hour or so to be trained up on the products and card machine, etc.

Thank you.

Normal service resumes, so let’s grab a cuppa and get stuck in.

The New Balsa Basics Spitfire is almost with us

Having whittled our balsa supplies down to the bone, I’m happy to announce that next week we should be back to firing on all cylinders production-wise.

The wood shortage has perhaps hit our Balsa Basics range hardest and we can’t wait to bring the new, upgraded Spitfire into stock.

We have lots of you waiting with the Spitfire in your wishlist on our website so these photos from Chris Long of his production ready, final prototype should whet your appetite even more!

In the past, we supplied the Spitfire with a cream polyester heat-shrink covering.

I was personally never a fan of this colour.

Chris had the insight to suggest that a light grey for both the Spitfire and Hurricane kits may be better and, do you know what, he was absolutely right.

The models look great “out of the box”, however the grey also acts as a super base colour for camo schemes.

These pics of the BB Hurricane show what I mean.

As we’re so close to production, we’ve just made the new Spitfire available for you to pre-order on the website.

This has two benefits:

1 - it means that if you order now, you’ll get ahead of the queue and receive one of the first batch of kits

2 - it helps us because we’ll have a better idea of how many to produce to meet initial demand.

As a little sweetener, there’s £10 off each pre-ordered Balsa Basics Spitfire with the price reverting to standard once the kits are generally available towards the beginning of November.

Meet the designers

One of the pages we need to update on our website is the “About Us” page.

Received wisdom suggests that customers prefer to do business with people they know, like and trust which is quite hard to achieve as an online company.

The best solution we could think of was to create a “Meet The Team” section so that you can put faces to the names you hear about in this newsletter.

Trouble is, we’re all timid little country mice who don’t like appearing in public, but I guess we all just need to grow a pair and get on with having some photos taken…

Heroically, our two designers Chris Long and Andrew Darby have stepped up to the plate and provided not just photos but also brief bios.

You lucky people get to have a sneak preview before these are published to the website.

Andrew Darby

My interest in models and aeroplanes started when I was about 10 or so in the early eighties. My Grandad bought me an Airfix Lysander. I made a decent job of it and Grandad was sufficiently impressed that he bought me a Liberator, which also went quite well. However proud I was of them, I was never happy with the fact that they couldn’t actually fly.

This is where “stick and tissue” balsa kits by names such as Keil Kraft and Veron came in.

After a few very poor attempts, I built a Keil Kraft Ercoupe, which actually flew! I was bitten by the bug enough to build more, and to learn about aviation in general. Building models was left behind by my mid-teens, but I was sufficiently enthused by my modelling experiences and the idea of engineering in general, to do a degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Hertfordshire.

On leaving university I worked at a company that made engineering lab equipment and my knowledge was employed in the design of wind tunnels amongst other things. During this period cars were my dominant hobby, including the restoration of an MG Midget which I still own.

The arrival of my daughter lead to more evenings in - and things that could be done quietly!

Trying to think of something to do other than staring at the TV, my wife reminded me of my teenage hobby. Initially I was somewhat dismissive as I knew that Keil Kraft and Veron and the type of kits I had built had disappeared many years before. However, an internet search revealed a whole community of people dedicated to stick and tissue models, so a new chapter began.

I became an avid collector and builder of the Keil Kraft Flying Scale series and the Veron Tru-flite Series and, with a few years and more knowledge under my belt, they were a lot more successful than my teenage attempts!

Through this came the association with Hadi and the team at VMC, as he had been put in touch with me to ask if I would build them a Keil Kraft Spitfire as a display for an event they were attending, which I duly did.

Conversations then began about “doing it better” i.e. designing new kits in the spirit of the old, but with accurate laser cutting, better detail, removable nose blocks etc. in mind from the outset.

So the Magnificent Flying Machines were born…

Free flight rubber powered models are a lot of fun to build and fly, and I have been fortunate through VMC to have designs kitted specifically for newcomers to the hobby - the aim of which is to encourage the next generation of modellers and engineers.

Chris Long

I think I was always destined to be involved with Aeromodelling.

My Grandfather built and flew model aircraft with Sydney Camm (designer of the Hawker Hurricane and Hunter amongst many others) when both were members of Windsor Model Aeroplane Club in the early 1900s.

Subsequently, my dad also became a keen aero-modeller.

At the age of around nine I was given my first model to build - a Keil Kraft Elf, which I successfully built and flew with guidance from my dad. Lots more (pocket money allowing) models followed including some that I designed myself.

In 1976 I got my dream 'Saturday' job working in my local model shop at G M H Bunce & Co Ltd in West Street, Fareham.

I worked there (weekends and during school/college holidays) for around 4 years before I joined Ordnance Survey as a cartographic draughtsman. During my time at ‘Bunces’ (as it was known locally), in addition to serving customers, I also built models for customers on commission, set up engines for new owners and generally had a great time.

On starting my career at OS and meeting Nicky my wife, aero-modelling took something of a back seat while I got hooked into classic Italian cars – namely Lancia.

I dabbled occasionally with aero-modelling over the years, but it was not until I took voluntary redundancy from OS that I really got back into the hobby, spending an interesting time getting ‘up to speed’ with the advances the hobby had made whilst I had been away.

Nicky and I moved to Cumbria in 2012 and I started to build and design even more models.

Andrew Darby, designer of the excellent range of Vintage Model Company (VMC) Magnificent Flying Machine kits, noticed my conversion of his Sopwith Camel to RC on a forum, resulting in me being contacted by Hadi at VMC.

This led to me working as a freelance designer for VMC, who have kitted several of my original model designs.

In addition, I have also been kept busy updating legacy kits allowing them to be produced using modern laser cutting methods.

COMMUNITY BUILDS

Something a bit different for you this time.

Júlio Isidro

You may have seen some of Júlio’s models in previous newsletters, however you may not know that Júlio is a household name on Portuguese television, perhaps akin to the late Michael Parkinson in the UK or Ed Sullivan in the US.

As an aero-modeller from an early age, Júlio continues to promote the hobby whenever he gets the opportunity, as evidenced by these photos of him appearing on morning TV shows and in the pages of Portugal’s equivalent of Hello magazine.

And here's Júlio as a 9 year old clutching an Eaglet even back then!

Júlio usually makes an annual trip to the UK to attend one or more of our aero-modelling events and it was an honour to meet him at Old Warden a couple of years ago.

He’s very keen to get his hands on the new Lysander and I’m looking forward to showing his model here in the newsletter soon!

Bizarrely we had submissions from three modellers this week, who are newsletter readers, but make models that aren’t your classic “stick and tissue” (although they make those too).

Brian Goodwin got in touch with a picture of his glorious Veron Marlin Cabin Cruiser.

Must admit to a slight frisson of excitement on seeing this, as it exudes a certain early to mid-century “vibe” of laid back luxury - perhaps a cruise on Lake Garda in a crisp white shirt, linen flannels, one hand on the helm, the other nursing a Martini…

I’m getting carried away - sorry.

Anyway, Brian said:

“Reading your latest Aerogramme (which I think is a great title for your newsletters), as an 86yr old model maker who started on model aircraft and moved on to boats, for no particular reason the name Veron came into my mind. I built quite a few Veron aircraft kits and in 1953 I purchased a Veron Marlin Cabin Cruiser kit for the princely sum of £3 15 shillings. I still have this model and sail her regularly. I know your company deals with aircraft models but thought you might be interested in seeing this Veron product which I still treat with loving care.”

Thanks Brian - please feel free to send any more pics you have of your models - land, air or water-based!

Jim Phillips from Oklahoma sent in this dramatic shot of his rocket.

Jim said:

“Greetings from Oklahoma. This was a redesign of the Aerotech Zephyr. It was powered by a H100W-14A DMS - the power curve (Newtons) is designed for 234 N-sec/52.6 lb-sec. Flew 3,250' AGL with FAA clearance: there's a flightpath at a local airport a few miles from our launch site. Avionics included an altimeter and chute delay system.”

I bet this was super exciting to see in real life Jim - thanks for sending it in.

And finally, Clive Foden included these photos of his Folland Gnat from a plastic scale model kit.

Lovely work Clive!

That’s it for this week, but don’t forget to pre-order a Balsa Basics Spitfire if you’d like to jump the queue and get £10 off the normal price.

All the best

Hadi & the VMC Team

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